Nvidia GeForce GTX Titan X Review and Ratings

Editors’ Rating:

Our Verdict:
Nvidia’s latest Titan is the best single-chip card for maxed-out 4K gaming, delivering a significant boost over the GeForce GTX 980 in a quiet-running card. (One caveat: If you’re willing to deal with multi-GPU complications and a hulking external radiator, AMD’s Radeon R9 295X2 pushes more pixels for much less money.) Read More…

What We Liked…

Fastest single-chip video card available

Can handle 4K gaming without the hassle of SLI or CrossFire

Maintains reasonable 250-watt TDP and runs quietly

What We Didn’t…

Pricey

Not as powerful as dual-GPU Radeon R9 295X2, which costs much less

Can’t handle all 4K games at the highest settings

Won’t appeal to developers the way previous Titans did

Nvidia GeForce GTX Titan X Review

Table of Contents

Introduction

[Editors' Note: Be aware that pricing and features for video cards based on a given graphics chip can vary significantly, depending on the actual card maker. AMD and Nvidia make video "reference cards" based on their graphics processors, which they often send out for review. Third-party partners—MSI, Sapphire, EVGA, Asus, and many others—make and sell cards that often adhere closely to the design of these reference boards (“stock boards”), as well as versions with slight differences in port configuration, the amount and speed of onboard memory, and the cooling fans or heat sinks installed. Be sure the specs and ports/connections on any "partner" board you're looking at are the same as what we've reviewed before making the purchase. Here, we reviewed Nvidia’s own direct-sold version of the GeForce GTX Titan X; partner boards should not differ.]

Nvidia’s GeForce GTX Titan line of uber-high-end graphics cards have been the crème-de-la-creme for consumer video cards for some time now--but they have always been a hard sell for all but the most extreme gamers.

While the Titans consistently pushed the bleeding edge of gaming performance, at $1,000—or much more, if you count the dual-chip GeForce GTX Titan Z—they’re just too pricey for most gamers’ budgets. That’s especially true when alternatives are available, from AMD and Nvidia alike, that deliver nearly as much pixel-pushing power for a lot less.

But here in the spring of 2015, the PC-gaming world is in a bit of an odd space. 4K monitors have quickly slipped in price, to as low as $400, and there’s no question that recent games look stunning running at their 3,840x2,160 resolution.

The problem, though, is that the two most powerful consumer single-chip graphics cards, AMD’s Radeon R9 290X and Nvidia’s GeForce GTX 980, aren’t really up to the task of 4K gaming at high settings. In our demanding Metro: Last Light and Hitman: Absolution tests, the GeForce GTX 980 couldn’t even reach 20 frames per second (fps) in our testing at 4K resolution—well below the bare minimum of 30fps required for smooth gaming.

That’s forced gamers who want demanding titles to look their very best at 4K to opt for multiple cards arranged in a bank using Nvidia’s SLI or AMD’s CrossFire technology, or to fork over for one of the scarce multiple-GPU cards like AMD’s Radeon R9 295X2 or Nvidia’s older GeForce GTX 690. Those are solutions, yes, but not ideal ones, considering that many games don’t launch with multi-GPU support right at the outset. Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor, for instance, launched at the end of September 2014, but the driver update that added multi-GPU support didn’t arrive until late November. And even when SLI or CrossFire support does come, it can still bring frustrations, like in-game artifacts or uneven frame times.

So while a single-GPU solution is generally simpler and better, all else being equal, there hasn’t yet been a single-chip video card that could unequivocally handle high-end, maxed-out 4K gaming. That’s why Nvidia’s latest Titan, the GeForce GTX Titan X, arguably holds more appeal for gamers here in early 2015 than the GeForce GTX Titan Black did when it launched, just about a year ago.

With 50 percent more CUDA cores than the GeForce GTX 980, the GeForce GTX Titan X gets a lot closer to single-chip 4K gaming bliss, while running not very far behind the dual-GPU GeForce GTX Titan Z. That being said, the Titan X still couldn’t achieve smooth frame rates at 4K on our very toughest benchmark tests. But if you dial back a couple of in-game settings and either turn off or turn down anti-aliasing (AA) altogether (or switch to Nvidia’s less-demanding MFAA setting, where available), this card should deliver the best 4K gaming experience you can get today, and with reasonable power demands. (More on that later.)

Now, don’t get us wrong: At $999 at launch, the GeForce GTX Titan X is still inarguably quite expensive for most gamers. But if you’ve shelled out for a nice 4K screen and a slew of other high-end components, it’s the only real single-card option if you want your games to look and perform their best from the day of launch. That being said, if you’re willing to deal with the hassles of a multi-GPU setup, and you have space in your desktop PC’s chassis for a self-contained cooling loop with a big, double-wide radiator, AMD’s dual-GPU Radeon R9 295X2 is an incredible value at its current price. From some third-party card makers, it was as low as $700 at this writing in mid-March 2015.

If you’re a developer, however, the new Titan X will hold less appeal than previous Titan models. To make room for improved graphics performance (which relies on single-point precision processing, or FP32), the company has severely reduced the space dedicated for double-precision processing (FP64). Without getting too technical, this means that the GeForce GTX Titan X will perform much like a GeForce GTX 980 for compute tasks that require FP64 processing. As a result, developers will likely want to stick with previous-generation Titans or opt for an Nvidia Quadro or AMD FirePro card instead. But the company says the card excels at the process of teaching computers to learn and recognize complex patterns and variables—a field tightly tied to big-data crunching and artificial intelligence development called Deep Learning.

That’s outside the scope of our testing, but even so, without the developer-friendly compute performance of previous-generation Titan cards, the GeForce GTX Titan X may have a somewhat narrower appeal: primarily, as the pinnacle of video cards for well-heeled gamers. But for those looking to game at 4K and top in-game settings without the hassles of multi-GPU setups, it is, at this point, the only card on the block that can really deliver.

Design & Features

The GeForce GTX Titan X is based on a GM200 graphics chip, a beefy new slice of silicon built on the now well-established “Maxwell” architecture. It has 3,072 CUDA cores—a 50 percent increase over the GeForce GTX 980. The card’s 12GB of GDDR5 memory (running at an effective 7GHz) runs on a wide 384-bit bus. The extreme amount of memory and wide bus are ideal for large texture files and high resolutions, and together they help establish the GeForce GTX Titan X as an excellent 4K gamer.

Rather than rattle off a full list of specs, here’s a chart of the salient ones, direct from Nvidia...

As you can see, the GeForce GTX Titan X delivers a 50 percent increase in CUDA cores and a tripling of memory (on a wider bus) versus the GeForce GTX 980, although the clock speed is a little lower. (The GeForce GTX 980’s stock clock speed is 1,126MHz.) The GeForce GTX Titan X’s thermal design power (TDP) rating is 250 watts, well higher than the GeForce GTX 980’s 165 watts, but in line with that of the previous-generation Titan card, so the card can be powered off of a six-pin and an eight-pin power connector.

That TDP means you could power an extreme gaming rig built around the GeForce GTX Titan X using only a 600-watt power supply. Opt for the dual-GPU AMD Radeon R9 295X2 instead, and you may need to upgrade the power supply in your system as well, negating the value proposition. In the case of the R9 295X2, AMD recommends a 1,500-watt power supply and says the two eight-pin connectors should be able to deliver a combined 50 amps. (Check out this PDF link for more about the R9 295X2 and power supplies.) Suffice it to say that while AMD continues to deliver a solid value in terms of raw performance, its current cards’ power requirements look more and more out of step with every new Maxwell-based card that Nvidia launches.

Like previous Titan cards, Nvidia says its third-party card partners will be sticking to the reference design, which is fine by us. (Nvidia will also be selling a pure-Nvidia-branded version direct.) The company has stuck to the “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” mantra in terms of design. The GeForce GTX Titan X looks very similar to other recent Titans, as well as the stock GeForce GTX 980, though it sports a Darth Vader-like black exterior this time around.

Under the hood, the company says it has injected epoxy into the conductors and capacitors to cut down on coil noise or “whine.” Coil whine is a high-pitched noise that can emanate from some cards and other components as power flows through the electromagnetic coils. We haven’t noticed the issue on any of the recent cards we’ve tested, but some GeForce GTX 970 buyers have complained about it being a problem, so it’s nice to see Nvidia taking pre-emptive measures this time around.

The port selection on the card is, as we’d expect, the same as the GeForce GTX 980 and the company’s other recent high-end cards. You get a single dual-link DVI port and three full-sized DisplayPorts, with an HDMI 2.0 port wedged, oddly, in-between the DisplayPorts.

Like the GeForce GTX 980 and GTX 970, the Titan X can drive four displays, and up to three 4K displays at 60Hz. But you’ll definitely need more than one GeForce GTX Titan X if you plan to do some crazy three-4K-screen gaming at full resolution.

The GeForce GTX Titan X certainly isn’t going to fit inside most small Mini-ITX cases. Even so, occupying two slots and measuring about 10.5 inches long, it’s far from the biggest card you can buy, and indeed impressively compact given what it is. AMD’s dual-GPU Radeon R9 295X2, for instance, is a foot long, not counting its external radiator.

With its Maxwell-based video cards—the mainstream gaming cards that make up the GTX 900 line—Nvidia brought in a whole host of new gaming-centric features. The three key ones are Dynamic Super Resolution (DSR), Multi-Frame Sampled Anti-Aliasing (MFAA), and enhanced ShadowPlay in-game recording. In a nutshell, DSR effectively renders your game graphics at a higher resolution than your screen can display, then downscales it to the resolution your monitor is currently running, in the interest of rendering detail better. MFAA, meanwhile, smoothes out object edges in the same way as standard MSAA, but with less of a performance hit. And the changes to the ShadowPlay feature include support for recording in-game at 4K resolutions and 60fps. The GeForce GTX Titan X also supports these features, but rather than rehashing them here, check out the New Gaming Features page on our GTX 960 review. We’ve gone into greater detail there, especially on DSR and MFAA, in this review and the reviews of several other Maxwell-based cards.

On the next page, we’ll launch into our performance discussion, in which we tested the GeForce GTX Titan X against a host of competing cards using our suite of synthetic and gaming tests. The competing cards were two other Titan cards (the GeForce GTX Titan Z and GTX Titan Black), as well as Nvidia’s GeForce GTX 980. On the AMD side of the aisle, we matched up the GeForce GTX Titan X against the Radeon R9 295X2 dual-GPU monster and the company’s leading single-GPU card when we wrote this, the Radeon R9 290X.

Table of Contents

Nvidia GeForce GTX Titan X

Our Verdict:
Nvidia’s latest Titan is the best single-chip card for maxed-out 4K gaming, delivering a significant boost over the GeForce GTX 980 in a quiet-running card. (One caveat: If you’re willing to deal with multi-GPU complications and a hulking external radiator, AMD’s Radeon R9 295X2 pushes more pixels for much less money.)

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